ODC Theater Presents This is Also the Art with Lauren Simpson

Lauren Simpson is an Omaha-based choreographer. Her recent project Moving Truck was performed on front lawns throughout Omaha and featured in the Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America program. From 2014-2019 she and collaborator Jenny Stulberg created Still Life Dances, a series of movement studies based on still life paintings. These works were nominated for two Izzie Awards in 2016 and received generous support from foundations and an award from San Francisco Arts Commission. Lauren is currently an artist in residence at ODC Theater in San Francisco through 2021 and a recipient of the 2020 Drew Billings Artist Support Grant through Amplify Arts. She held residencies at CounterPulse Theater, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company through its CHIME Program. Lauren danced for choreographers Liz Lerman and Risa Jaroslow. She was on faculty at Harvard College, University of San Francisco and the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. She completed an M.F.A. at University of Colorado-Boulder, Ed.M. at Harvard University, B.A. at Carleton College.

Celeste Butler is a fiber and textile artist, Quiltologist, and storyteller based in Omaha, NE. Butler has worked on several community engagement art projects, celebrating the pride and culture of North Omaha and collaborating with mothers who have lost their children to violence, developing set design for 2019 Union Fellow Liz Gre’s opera Whispered Like the Wind, and more. Butler has participated in in-school artist-in-residences, working with children at Nelson Mandela and Saratoga Elementary Schools, teaching the next generation the art of quilting and storytelling. Her work has been widely exhibited, including the 2020 Citylight Arts Project, the Durham Western Heritage Museum, the 2018-2019 Thread exhibition at the Museum of Nebraska Arts, and the Film Streams (Dundee, Omaha) permanent gallery collection. In 2018 Butler presented a solo quilt exhibition at the Burgwin Wright House Museum (Wilmington, North Carolina). Her work was featured in the group exhibitions Yours For Race and Country: Reflections on the Life of Colonel Charles Young (National Afro-American Museum, 2019) and Visioning Human Rights: Quilting in the New Millennium (Fitton Center for Creative Arts, 2018).

Nick Miller is an artist and educator working and teaching in Omaha, NE. Specializing in geometric abstraction, he is a painter, sculpture and installation artist who also has created dozens of murals across the United States —in Buffalo, San Francisco, Austin, Memphis, Philadelphia ,Kansas City and Omaha. With an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010, and a BFA from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania 2006 and a year at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, Miller has exhibited his work at Burchfield Penney Art Center, Benjamin’s Gallery, Buffalo;; Artpark, Lewiston, NY; Tower Fine Art Gallery at SUNY Brockport; Cultural Center in Niagara Falls; Co-Lab Projects, Austin,TX; The Contemporary Austin; the Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco;Project Project Gallery, Omaha; University of Nebraska Gallery, Omaha. His work is permanently installed at the University at Buffalo Anderson Gallery and in the collection of Fidelity Investments amongst others. He has received awards for his work including a Spark Award for DEC Program of the Year from ASI(Art Services Initiative) of Western NY in 2017 and Best New Public Art from Austin Monthly in 2013.

Galen Rogers grew up in San Francisco studying taiko, aikido, capoeira, gamelan, and tablas. These forms provide the foundation of his physicality and musicality and cultivated curiosity, sensitivity, and an expansive vocabulary from an early age. At Oberlin College he earned his BA in ethnomusicology and founded Oberlin College Taiko. After graduating from Oberlin College in '12 he joined Jiten Daiko, a taiko ensemble based in San Francisco that focuses on pioneering new expressive territory for taiko arts. He has been the director of this ensemble since 2014. in 2013 he also began studying Gaga with James Graham. He performed professionally and toured with James Graham Dance Theater in 2016 and 2017, and has continued to dance professionally ever since. He also currently teaches taiko at Rosa Parks Elementary, John Muir Elementary, and Marin Academy, and he teaches taiko, capoeira, gamelan, and ethnomusicology at San Francisco Ruth Asawa School of the Arts.